UPPER MERION — More than 400 people attended Mission Kids’ fifth annual fundraiser at the Radisson Hotel at Valley Forge Thursday night, and a special guest shared a story not many are willing or able to tell.

Dubbed “Mission Possible,” the event raised money for the programs and services offered by Mission Kids, the child advocacy nonprofit founded by Montgomery County’s District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.

The evening’s keynote speaker, Sasha Joseph Neulinger, a director with Step1films, based in Montana, is a survivor of child sexual abuse who has turned his life toward helping others cope with similar ordeals. He plans to exemplify this through an independent documentary film he calls “Rewind to Fastforward,” he said.

The film is still in the making, and Neulinger told The Times Herald he has more than 200 hours of home video from before, during and after his years of child abuse. He even plans to interview his abusers, he said.

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“What you see is a beautiful, wide-eyed, innocent child, and then you see the shift that something’s wrong, and then you see the whole journey,” he said. “I want my film to express what child sexual abuse is from a child abuse victim. Ultimately, you can’t control what happens around you, you can only control how you (react). After all the pain that I’ve been through, I believe that every human being is born with a clean slate.”

Neulinger is the nephew of renowned former New York City cantor Howard Nevison, who pleaded guilty to indecent assault in 2006. Neulinger lived in Lower Merion during the time of the abuse in the mid-1990s, between the ages of 4 and 7. Nevison would go to Lower Merion for family events and occasions, where he would see Neulinger.

Having lived in Montana for the past five years, Neulinger said he looks back at his experience dealing with the Montgomery County criminal justice system and wonders what could have been done differently.

“The justice system — without Mission Kids — there’s no way that we can get the number of convictions we need to bring child sexual abusers to justice,” he said. “Think about being a child in an adult’s world. You walk into a huge courtroom, into a detective’s office — you’re already scared of adults because you’ve been abused and you’re meeting strangers and they’re trying to get you to open up about what happened to you? No way. I know that if I had Mission Kids in my life, the convictions would have come faster. Luckily, I had an incredible support group and I was able to get what I needed to finally reclaim myself and love myself again after all of those years of pain.”

Before Mission Kids Child Advocacy Center launched in 2008, Neulinger said, the criminal justice process for child abuse victims involved multiple lengthy interviews with police, counselors, detectives and attorneys, often times forcing the child to relive the trauma that put them there in the first place.

“This past year was very busy for us,” said Mission Kids Executive Director Abbie Newman. “We are so grateful to be nationally recognized, because it will enable us to help more children and educate more individuals on the damaging effects of child abuse.”